Displaying items by tag: museum of fine arts boston

Malcolm Rogers, the Ann and Graham Gund Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), announced to the museum’s board of trustees that he will retire as soon as a successor is hired to fill the position. Rogers has been with the MFA for nearly 20 years and spearheaded the museum’s various expansions and renovations and oversaw a number of acclaimed exhibitions. Rogers said, “My 20 years have been such an invigorating time at the MFA, as we worked to reinforce the Museum’s position as a vital community resource and transform it into a global destination for arts and culture. I would like to thank the Museum’s Board of Trustees, staff, members and volunteers, as well as the millions of people from Boston and around the world who consider the MFA a special part of their lives and have visited during my two decades here.”

Since his appointment in 1994, Rogers has grown the MFA’s comprehensive collection, enhanced arts education programs, and beautified the museum’s campus. In 2008, Rogers reopened the MFA’s historic Fenway entrance, which had been closed for nearly 30 years. In 2010, the new Art of the Americas Wing opened at the museum -- a milestone achievement for Rogers, the MFA and Boston. Rogers spearheaded a campaign that raised $504 million, of which $345 million funded new galleries and conservation labs. In 2011, a wing of the museum was renovated and reopened as the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, which features 10 new galleries, classrooms, and a variety of public spaces. Currently, gallery renovations are underway in the MFA’s George D. and Margo Behrakis Wing for Art of the Ancient World. Works acquired during Rogers’ tenure include Edgar Degas' “Duchessa di Montejasi with Her Daughters, Elena and Camilla,” Piet Mondrian’s “Composition with Blue, Yellow, and Red,” and Ellsworth Kelly’s “Blue Green Yellow Orange Red.”

The MFA will celebrate Rogers’ 20th anniversary this fall with a series of events including lectures, community programs, and a gala, which will be held on September 6.

Earlier this year, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston invited the public to choose works for a special Impressionist exhibition. Over 24 days, fans chose from a selection of fifty works from the MFA’s Impressionist collection, casting their votes through the museum’s website or Facebook page. After receiving 41,497 submissions, the MFA has opened “Boston Loves Impressionism,” its first crowdsourced exhibition.

Participants expressed particular adoration for Vincent van Gogh’s “Houses at Auvers,” Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies,” and Edgar Degas’ “Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer.” In addition to the 30 works from the MFA’s collection, the exhibit includes five loans from local collectors.

Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the MFA, said, “While the museum’s popular European Impressionism Gallery is closed for renovation, we thought it would be exciting to let the public choose which of their favorite works would remain on view. This is the first time we’ve ever presented an exhibition selected by the public.”

“Boston Loves Impressionism” will remain on view in the MFA’s Lois and Michael Torf Gallery through May 26, 2014.

On April 6, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts will present the exhibition ‘Quilts and Color: The Pilgrim/Roy Collection.’ The show will feature 60 quilts from the renowned Pilgrim/Roy collection, which was assembled by two trained artists, Paul Pilgrim and Gerald Roy, over five decades. Pilgrim and Roy favored bold and striking designs that echoed the work of mid-20th century Abstract Expressionists and optical artists.

The exhibition’s opening sections will begin with the brightly colored works that first caught the collectors’ attention and sparked their life-long passion for quilts. This portion will explore the principles of color theory and the use of color vibrations, mixtures, gradations and harmonies in quilts from the 19th to early 20th century. The exhibition will also touch on traditional designs, the effect of color and pattern, and artists who worked outside of standard patterns and design.

‘Quilts and Color: The Pilgrim/Roy Collection’ will be complemented by a number of events at the Museum of Fine Arts including discussions led by collector Gerald Roy and a live quilt making demonstration.

The exhibition will remain on view through July 27.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) is asking the public to choose their favorite Impressionist works for a special exhibition, ‘Boston Loves Impressionism’. From January 6 through January 29, participants can vote for their favorite paintings on the MFA’s website or on Facebook. Voters will choose from a selection of 50 works from the MFA’s collection of Impressionist art, which includes masterpieces by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas. The top 30 paintings will be featured in the exhibition, which opens February 14.  

Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director at the MFA, said, “While the Museum’s popular European Impressionism Gallery is closed for renovation, we thought it would be exciting to let the public choose which of their favorite works would remain on view. This is the first time we’ve ever presented an exhibition selected by the public. Boston has long loved Impressionism, and voters have the opportunity to write the next chapter in the story of Boston’s passion for the artistic movement that has played such an important role in the MFA’s history.”

‘Boston Loves Impressionism’ will remain on view at the MFA through May 26, 2014.

Scott Schaefer, the J. Paul Getty Museum’s Senior Curator of Paintings, will retire on January 21, 2014. Schaefer joined the Getty in 1999 after stints at Sotheby’s, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Schaefer, who helmed the Getty’s Paintings department for four years, helped the museum acquire a total of 70 paintings and pastels and five sculptures. Among the most important recent acquisitions are the Getty’s first paintings by Paul Gauguin, J.M.W. Turner’s Modern Rome, and a rare self-portrait by Rembrandt.

Timothy Potts, the Getty’s director, said, “Through his acquisitions, Scott has made an impact on every one of the Museum’s paintings galleries and, in particular, transformed our eighteenth-century French collection. We will miss his discerning eye, keen intelligence and above all his unswerving commitment to the Museum.”

While preparing for the exhibition John Singer Sargent’s Watercolors, a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston discovered photocopied letters that Jacqueline Kennedy had written to the museum’s former director, Perry Rathbone. The letters, which were found in the museum’s archives, were written two months after John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

The correspondence was spurred by Rathbone’s offer to extend the loan of four of the six Sargents that hung in the Kennedys’ private sitting room in the White House. Jackie responded by saying, ““You cannot imagine what they mean to me – or perhaps you can because you extended their loan so chivalrously. But they were in the room — the only room in the White House which was our private, happy sitting room — where the children tumbled around — where we sat with friends. And the ones I chose were on the wall opposite where I sat. The President sat under them. Whenever I think of all our happy days and evenings in this strange house … I think of him sitting in his favorite chair with the Sargents over his head. Perhaps it is a way to cling to a past that can never be the same again — perhaps in a few months they will make me so sad that I will want to send them back to you … But right now they are a consolation.”  

Jackie Kennedy eventually returned the works to the MFA; they are currently on display as part of the Sargent’s Watercolor exhibition, which is on view through January 20, 2014.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is currently presenting a single-work exhibition devoted to the rare Renaissance painting Senigallia Madonna by Piero della Francesca. The show, titled An Italian Treasure, Stolen and Recovered, recounts the fascinating story of the work’s theft and recovery in the 1970s. On loan from Italy’s Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, this is the first time that Senigallia Madonna has been on view in the United States.

The exceptional tempera and oil on panel painting was one of three paintings stolen in 1975 and recovered the following year by Italy’s famed Carabinieri Cultural Heritage Protection Command, which specializes in the protection of the country’s cultural heritage on national and international levels. The loan is part of the Museum of Fine Arts’ Visiting Masterpieces series as well as Italy’s initiative, 2013–Year of Italian Culture in the United States, which was organized to nurture the close bonds between Italy and the U.S.

Senigallia Madonna will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston through January 6, 2014. A video chronicling the efforts of the Carabinieri will complement the work.

In honor of the statewide celebration – Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture – the state’s governor, Deval Patrick, has named September 17, 2013 Massachusetts Furniture Day. A special event will be held in Nurses Hall in the State House in Boston.

Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture is the first-ever collaboration between 10 museums and cultural institutions throughout the state that will highlight the area’s furniture making legacy. A series of exhibitions and public programs will explore furniture making from the 1600s to the present day. Participating institutions include the Colonial Society of Massachusetts; Concord Museum; Fuller Craft Museum; Historic Deerfield; Historic New England; Massachusetts Historical Society; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; North Bennet Street School; Old Sturbridge Village; and Peabody Essex Museum; and Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library.

Dennis Fiori, President of the Massachusetts Historical Society and one of the project’s founders, said, “We are honored that Governor Patrick has recognized the Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture project with such a wonderful designation. By declaring September 17 as Massachusetts Furniture Day, Governor Patrick is recognizing the truly remarkable legacy in American furniture history that Massachusetts holds, not only as a traditional industry but also as an art form.”

Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture will run through December 2014. For more information visit www.fourcenturies.org.

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas has acquired a portrait by John Singer Sargent depicting Edwin Booth, the renowned 19^th century Shakespearean actor and brother of Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth. The Players, a private club for actors founded by Booth and his peers, commissioned the full-length portrait in 1890.

Edwin Booth was housed at The Players club until 2002, when debt forced the organization to sell the work to a private collector. The painting had only gone on public display twice before being acquired by the Amon Carter Museum: once in 1926 as part of Sargent’s memorial exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and from November 2003 to February 2004 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Andrew Walker, Director of the Amon Carter Museum, said, “Sargent is one of the most important American artists and we are thrilled to add another one of his masterpieces to our collection. We are particularly intrigued by this painting as it is among his most brilliantly conceived full-length male portraits.” The museum also owns Sargent’s Alice Vanderbilt Shepard, which was acquired in 1999.

Edwin Booth, which was purchased for about $5 million, is currently on its first extended display in the museum’s main gallery.

Colby College in Waterville, Maine will unveil its 26,000-square foot Alfond-Lunder Family Pavilion on Saturday, July 13, 2013 at an opening event for friends of the institution followed by an open house on Sunday. One of the inaugural exhibitions, The Lunder Collection: A Gift of Art to Colby College, will present over 280 works gifted to the Colby College Museum of Art by major supporters, Peter and Paula Lunder. Mr. Lunder is a life overseer of the institution while Mrs. Lunder is a life trustee of the board.

The other exhibitions that will be on view include a selection of Chinese art from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Lunder-Colville Collection; a presentation of American folk art weathervanes; paintings from the Alex Katz Foundation; a survey of abstract works by John Marin; and an exhibition exploring the design of the new pavilion, which adds 10,000 square feet of gallery space to the museum.

The Lunder Collection: A Gift of Art to Colby College, which includes works by John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Alexander Calder and Romare Bearden will be the highlight of the museum’s opening festivities.